As part of our process to monetize our website, we’ve decided to implement Kontera on our site.

“Kontera delivers relevant ads and information to your users while driving significant, complimentary revenue to your bottom line. Since Kontera’s In Text Advertising units are only activated when users engage with them, Kontera is a non-intrusive way to enhance the user’s browsing experience on your website or blog and deliver additional revenue along with control over the look and feel of your site” – source Kontera website.

Basically, Kontera is similar to Google AdSense, except that the ads appear when a user hovers over any text that Kontera has detected for ads. The text usually is hyperlinked to the ad, and the link appears with a double underline. On the Kontera Publishers web page you can find a video showing a demo of exactly how this works.

In order to use Kontera on your website, you must first register yourself as a Publisher. You can do this at the following URL: http://www.kontera.com/index.php/publishers/sign-up. Once you’ve completed the registration process, you will have to wait for a confirmation email from Kontera, saying that you have been approved. This approval process will take about 3 business days.

In your confirmation email you will see a link that you will need to select, in order to activate your account. Once you have done this, you will receive another email stating that your account is ready to use. Now go back and login to the Kontera website with the user id and password you created. This information should appear in your first confirmation email in case you forgot to record it when you initially registered.

Once you have logged onto the Kontera site, you are ready to download the plugin suitable for your blog. Kontera provides plugins for the following blogs, and the best part is that these plugins are free:

• WordPress
• Blogger
• Joomla
• Drupal

Simply follow the instructions on the Kontera site that is relevant to your blog. Since we’re using WordPress, the rest of this article discusses how to install and configure the WordPress plugin.

Note: if you are not using any of the 4 blogging software listed above, you can still use Kontera. You will simply have to cut and paste the HTML code created for your domain name directly into the pages where you want Kontera ads to appear. This is all explained on the Kontera site for you.

Installation and Configuration

We downloaded the WordPress 2.8 plugin directly from the Kontera site even though we’re currently running WordPress 2.9.1. It appears that this plugin still works for the newer version of WordPress.

Installing the plugin is very straightforward. You just have to download the entire Kontera plugin folder into your blog’s /wp-content/plugins folder, and activate it in the usual manner. You can refer to our previous post on How to Research, Choose and Install Plugins for more details on how to do this.

After you activate the plugin, you need to configure it. Go to your WordPress Settings, and click on Kontera Settings. The configuration options available to you under this link are:

• Kontera Publisher ID:  You will need to update your Kontera Publisher ID, which can be found when you login to your Kontera account, and click on the ContentLink Setup tab. On this page, you will see some HMTL code, that contains your Publisher ID:

Kontera Publisher Tag

Your Kontera Publisher ID will be in the area highlighted by the red box in the image above. Simply enter the number provided into the Kontera Publisher ID text box.

• Block ContentLink from Pages: this text box is where you can specify which Pages or Posts you want to disable any Kontera links from appearing on. In order to do this, you need to enter the Page or Post ID, and each ID needs to be separated by a comma. This may be a problem if you don’t know the IDs of your Pages or Posts.
  • For those of you who are “technically-minded”, you can find these IDs in the WordPress database.
  • If you’re not “technically-minded”, don’t fret, there’s an easier way which I’ll explain later on, where this text box will be automatically filled in for you. For the time being simply leave this text box empty.
• Select your ContentLinks’ color: need I say more? I think this is self-explanatory, right?
• Block ads from new posts for: this provides you the ability to block any ads from appearing on new posts for the specified number of days that you enter.
• Block ContentLinks from categories: this is where you specify which categories on your blog you wish to block any ads from appearing. You do have the option of selecting “None”, which means that ads will appear for all your categories.
• Enable ContentLink Ads: here you have 3 radio buttons where you must select where you want the ads to appear.
  • Enable ContentLink Ads on full page: this will display ads on your entire page, including the comments section.
  • Enable ContentLink Ads only on posts
  • Enable ContentLink Ads only on comments
• Disable Kontera Ads: this checkbox allows you to disable Kontera from your entire site if it is turned on.

Remember to hit the Update button in order to save your configuration changes.

Congratulations, you now have Kontera up and running on your site.

There are a couple more points I’d like to make here:

1. In order to display Kontera links on different domains, you must first obtain a new Kontera Publisher ID from Kontera. This will help keep the reporting separated for each domain you own. In order to obtain a new Kontera Publisher ID, follow these step:
   1. Login to your Kontera account.
   2. Select the Help tab, then click on the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page. 
   3. Another form will appear. On this new form, make sure the Details section is correct (i.e. login credentials). In the Message box, select Tag Settings for the Issue. Type in a Subject line like Additional Domain for My Account. Then type in your request inside the Inquiry Details text box. Be sure to include the list of domains URLs for which you are requesting the new tags.
   4. Note: you can also following this link to see these same instructions on the Kontera website.
2. Earlier I mentioned that in the Kontera Settings page, you didn’t have to enter the ID numbers for the different Pages or Posts where you want to disable any Kontera links from appearing on. Well, now that you have the plugin installed, simply open up any Post or Page in your blog. You will notice that at the top right hand side, the following Kontera entry exists, above the Publish area:

   

   Kontera Post Link Enablement

   Using  this link you can decide whether or not any Kontera ads should appear within that post or page. Turning on the checkbox enables the Kontera ads for the page or post. Enabling the link, will also automatically enter the ID for the page or post into your Kontera Settings page, under the Block ContentLink from Pages section.

    

Cheers!

Trish